1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a package and method used to disburse cigars in point-of-sale transactions through an already established infrastructure of cigarette or other vending machines or any other infrastructure especially adapted to accommodate the vending of cigarette packages. The invention also relates to a package for a cigar or similar smoking item incorporating an ashtray particularly well suited to a single use packaging system.
2. Description of the Related Art
There is an established infrastructure for the distribution of cigarettes through vending machine mediated, point of sale transactions. Another established infrastructure exists, for example within convenience stores, that facilitates the storage and point of sale, single package vending of cigarettes. Typical point of sale cigarette transactions are made in packages of twenty cigarettes, which is a quantity often desired for an individual's use. Cigarette packages are formed either of soft paper or thin cardboard, are generally cellophane-wrapped and generally have one of two well established and dominant sizes. The infrastructure for sale of cigarettes include vending machines or distribution racks that are designed to accommodate such packages on an individual package basis. Cigarettes thus have a well-established point of sale infrastructure for vending quantities demanded for personal use. By contrast, cigars do not have a well-established point of sale distribution channel for vending quantities demanded for personal use and have been difficult to purchase individually or in small quantities outside of specialized cigar retail establishments. Traditional cigar vending has been in the form of boxes of twenty, fifty or one hundred, which quantities cannot be considered appropriate for short term individual use. In part, the market channels conventionally preferred for cigars reflect the appreciation that cigars are best stored in environments maintained under careful moisture and temperature control. The nature of cigars and the culture of cigar smoking make single unit sales a strong preference.
Cigars are thicker than cigarettes and generally cannot be easily vended through standard vending machines that are configured for sales of packages of cigarettes having a standard size. Single cigar sales are difficult through standard cigarette vending machines because the transport mechanisms of such machines are too crude to handle the small size and the difficult cylindrical shape of cigars. In addition, cigars have leaf wrappers and often have substantially unbroken leaf tobacco contained within the leaf wrappers. This makes cigars both stiffer and more subject to damage than cigarettes, since it is undesirable to crush the tobacco leaf filler or to cut the leaf wrapper over the body of the cigar. Cigars are much more difficult to handle than cigarettes, because cigarettes are made of shredded tobacco within a paper wrapper. The somewhat delicate nature of cigars further exacerbates the difficulties of vending cigars, because vending machines are ill equipped to handle comparatively delicate products such as cigars. Because cigars are difficult to handle in their conventionally preferred sales configuration and because cigars can be somewhat delicate, it has generally not been practical to vend cigars through conventional vending machines of the type established for the vending of cigarettes.
With cigars, as with cigarettes, there is always a difficulty in disposing of the ashes produced as the article is smoked. There have been suggestions to alter the packaging of cigarettes to provide an ash compartment integral to the cigarette package. These prior suggestions have been unsuccessful, as evidenced by the failure of these suggestions to be implemented on any commercial basis. One of the problems with the ash compartments conventionally taught is that such ash compartments tend to compress the enclosed ashes as the compartment is closed. This creates a bellows effect that undesirably expels the ashes from the ash compartment as the compartment is closed. Another limitation of the conventional suggestions is that the ash compartment is configured as a separate lid or opening into the main storage compartment of the package. When ashes are stored in such compartments, the ashes undesirably mix with the smoking articles, so that smoking articles subsequently removed from the package are covered with ashes and cannot be handled cleanly.